Misperceiving Interactions Among Complements and Substitutes: Organizational Consequences
研究决策者误判活动间相互作用（互补或替代）的后果，发现误判互补品代价更高，因此企业应优先收集互补活动的信息，且分部激励更适合替代品部门。
Systems composed of activity choices that interact in nonsimple ways can allow firms to create and sustain a competitive advantage. However, in complex systems, decision makers may not always have a precise understanding of the exact strength of the interaction between activities. Likewise, incentive and accounting systems may lead decision makers to ignore or misperceive interactions. This paper studies formally the consequences of misperceiving interaction effects between activity choices. Our results suggest that misperceptions with respect to complements are more costly than with respect to substitutes. As a result, firms should optimally invest more to gather information about interactions among complementary activities—e.g., concerning network effects—than about interactions among substitute activities. Similarly, the use of division-based incentive schemes appears to be more advisable for divisions whose products are substitutes than for divisions that produce complements. It is further shown that system fragility is not necessarily positively correlated with the strength ofthe interaction between choices. While systems of complements become increasingly fragile as the strength of interaction increases, systems of substitutes can become increasingly stable.